When Valentine Wairimu Wathiomo quit her first job, she never really knew she was struggling with depression. She could not fathom the idea of her boss shouting at her colleagues for no apparent reason.
Like most youths, Wairimu went on with her daily business, as usual, hoping that she would be alright. However, things got worse each dawn, Wairimu didn’t know that she was depressed.
Pulselive.co.ke caught up with the 25-year-old digital marketer who takes us through her struggle with depression and personality problems.
Wairimu's childhood struggles
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Unlike most depression stories which are due to traumatic situations, Wairimu’s story is different. Her case with depression is tied up close to her personality and she traces it back to her childhood.
“I grew up a very weird child. I liked staying all alone just reading my books and indoors. Generally not playing with other kids” Wairimu recalls her childhood as a loner.
She would struggle to interact with other kids in school who thought she was a snob or just a grumpy person.
“Even my own parents thought my withdrawal habits would come to an end after adolescence, unfortunately, that never happened and they were also struggling to understand me,” she tells this journalist.
Mimicking people's emotions and alcoholism
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It was not until she joined campus that she figured out another aspect of herself: each time she got into a place with people, she would automatically feel their emotions. Even though she was happy, her emotions would change depending on what those around her were feeling. Wairimu did not understand what was happening to her and she actually thought that she was going insane.
With all the confusion of not knowing what was happening to her, Wairimu shifted to alcohol to numb her strange feelings.
“Every time I was around people, I would feel like their emotions were mine. I would walk into a room happy and maybe the guys there are sad, I would mimic their mood and my mood would just change instantly. And I did not understand what was going on with me. I thought I was maybe going insane or I am just a weirdo.
“Trying to figure out what was going on was hard and I tried numbing the whole weird feeling with alcohol. It was not the normal drinking, mine was overboard because I drank so much while in campus and it wasn’t a good time for me,” Wairimu narrates to this journalist.
Hostile working environments
When she started working, things got worse. She realized that she could not survive in a working environment where people were not handled with empathy. It pained her to see her colleagues being treated unfairly, she absorbed so many emotions that she got drained and quit her job.
“If there is a lot of pressure, if there is a lot of shouting, if there is a lot of stimuli around me, I cannot survive in such a place; and it’s hard because most of our workplaces are like that. With my first job, I quit and moved out immediately because I did not want questions from my parents and did not want to answer why I was doing all this because I also didn't understand it myself. I just wanted to be alone and figure things out,” Wairimu says.
What Wairimu hadn’t figured out was that the freedom that comes with moving out comes with responsibility. And a whole set of challenges awaited her.
Valentine Wairimu opens up on her painful battle with depression
I locked myself indoors for months
She adds, “I got a second job and the environment never changed from the first one. There was a lot of shouting, noise, and it was not even necessarily directed at me. It was at other people. I could feel the stress that people were going through and it was like I was carrying all that stress on myself. I figured out that I could not go on like this. I woke up one morning and could not leave my bed. I called my trainer and told him that I didn’t think I wanted to do this anymore. That was my last day there.”
She stayed for months in her house all by herself and avoided being around people as much as possible. Food became her best companion and before she knew it, her weight had gone up high. With no one around to talk to, Wairimu became suicidal as well. She remembers struggling so much not to give in to her suicidal thoughts.
“If I cannot be out there helping people as I want to, then what is the need for me to live?” she would think.
Wairimu locked herself indoors for months and in the process, she lost friends and lovers who could not understand her. She then decided that enough was enough; she braced herself for the job market and finally found a job that made her happy.
Wairimu's desire to help mental health victims
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Wairimu tells Pulselive.co.ke that her burden is a deep desire to help all those people being mistreated and those in pain whose emotions she deeply feels. She has, however, come to accept that she cannot help everyone.
As we come to the end of the interview, Wairimu tells us that she would like to help people with personality and mental health issues as a way of giving back to society.
“I feel like I am not doing enough as it is right now, and would be able to help people much better if I dedicate my life to clinical psychology.
In regards to that, Wairimu who holds a B.Sc. in Medical Science from Egerton University is currently looking for a scholarship to help her pursue a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology.
Psychologist explains Wairimu's condition
To understand more about Wairimu’s condition, we spoke to one Dr. Steve Ndegwa who is a psychologist and a lecturer at Daystar University.
According to Dr. Ndegwa, it’s normal to be empathetic but there should be boundaries. In as much as one feels other people’s emotions, they should be in a position to limit the extent to which other people’s emotions affect them.
Dr. Ndegwa also tells us the condition is in most cases triggered by something a person went through in life although the patient may not know it.
He goes on to tell Pulselive.co.ke that people with this condition also experience physical symptoms.
“Since the person is carrying too many emotions from other people, they feel exhausted and can also feel physical pain in their bodies. They also get anxious and are more prone to depression” adds Dr. Ndegwa.
About treatment, he advises one to seek therapy from psychologists since it’s a psychological and not a biological health condition. The therapy will help the patient learn how to draw a line when it comes to absorbing people’s emotions.